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Unified Approach to Inshore Ship Detection in Optical/radar Medium Spatial Resolution Satellite Images

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Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium of Space Optical Instruments and Applications (ISSOIA 2022)

Part of the book series: Springer Proceedings in Physics ((SPPHY,volume 295))

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Abstract

High-resolution optical or radar images are usually used as input data, while ship detection is based mainly on certain kinds of features, namely geometric or spectroradiometric ones. Image processing and analysis algorithms usually differ significantly for optical and radar ones. This circumstance complicates the software for ship detection and requires high-qualified experts’ participation. The authors propose an approach to ship detection involving a combination of specific geometric and radiometric features, which is quite possible to extract from a medium spatial resolution multiband satellite image. An essential advantage of the approach is the unification of algorithms for calculating features for both optical and radar satellite images.

The proposed approach is instantiated as the following step-by-step procedure:

In the first step, a mask of the water surface is acquired, where search targets, i.e. ships, can be located. Further processing is carried out within this mask only.

In the second step, anomalies of the water surface, which can be considered as candidates on ships, are detected by geometric features and separately by multidimensional spectroradiometric features. Then, the detected anomalies are presented in a unified probabilistic form. In the third step, the partial maps of geometric and spectroradiometric anomalies are fused into a single joint probability of locked targets using a modified Bayesian rule. Finally, in the fourth step, the decision on the detection is made by comparing the fused probability value with a specified threshold.

Evaluation of the proposed approach, conducted over actual medium resolution Sentinel 1 radar satellite images and Sentinel 2 optical ones, demonstrated fair performance.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Scientific Centre for Aerospace Research of the Earth, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, 01054, Ukraine

    Mykhailo O. Popov, Sergey A. Stankevich & Valentyn V. Pylypchuk

  2. Beijing Institute of Space Mechanics and Electricity, Beijing, 100190, China

    Kun Xing & Chunxiao Zhang

Authors
  1. Mykhailo O. Popov
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  2. Sergey A. Stankevich
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  3. Valentyn V. Pylypchuk
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  4. Kun Xing
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  5. Chunxiao Zhang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kun Xing .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Optics Research Group, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    H. Paul Urbach

  2. Changchun University of Science and Technology, Changchun, China

    Huilin Jiang

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Popov, M.O., Stankevich, S.A., Pylypchuk, V.V., Xing, K., Zhang, C. (2023). Unified Approach to Inshore Ship Detection in Optical/radar Medium Spatial Resolution Satellite Images. In: Urbach, H.P., Jiang, H. (eds) Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium of Space Optical Instruments and Applications. ISSOIA 2022. Springer Proceedings in Physics, vol 295. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4098-1_8

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